Re: something that you feel linux is missing

It's a tool called pkg_add pkg_del pkg_info, and with syntax to drive you crazy.

The pkg_ utilities indeed exist and they do work just fine. Personally I dont really like them either, but they can get the job done.

However there are other good package managers out there. "portmaster" is an excellent one and has never let me down. Syntax is easy to understand.And there is the new up and coming "pkgng" which I believe will be the official package manager when FreeBSD 10 is released. But it is usable already, just not declared stable and ready yet.

Until pkgng is official yet, I feel it's better to use the FreeBSD Ports system. It had never let me down and I have performed most upgrades of packages with it using portmaster.Only difference is, you are compiling from source.

Re: something that you feel linux is missing

Integration. There are a gazillion of distributions out there and I personally think it would be better for people to contribute to improve the distros instead of when finding something they don't like or a missing feature just fork the original project, and then continue forking over and over again. Likewise, it would be really nice if every rpm package would work on any rpm-based distro, any deb package work on any deb-based distro and so on.

Re: something that you feel linux is missing

forked from lmello wrote:

Integration. There are a gazillion of distributions out there and I personally think it would be better for people to contribute to improve the distros instead of when finding something they don't like or a missing feature just fork the original project, and then continue forking over and over again. Likewise, it would be really nice if every rpm package would work on any distro.

Re: something that you feel linux is missing

lmello wrote:

I personally think it would be better for people to contribute to improve the distros instead of when finding something they don't like or a missing feature just fork the original project, and then continue forking over and over again.

I think in many cases people already do that and only create forks when upstream rejects their patch or when they want to be significantly different than upstream.

lmello wrote:

Likewise, it would be really nice if every rpm package would work on any rpm-based distro, any deb package work on any deb-based distro and so on.

I don't think this can happen due to dependencies. Two distros may use the same package type but their repos can be way different.

Re: something that you feel linux is missing

Likewise, it would be really nice if every rpm package would work on any rpm-based distro, any deb package work on any deb-based distro and so on.

I don't think this can happen due to dependencies. Two distros may use the same package type but their repos can be way different.

There are examples like Salix packages being fully compatible with good ol' Slackware, and Ubuntu packages that simply don't work on Debian. I used Ubuntu and then Debian a long, long time ago so I don't know how things are now...

Regarding forks, I think it's useful when individual projects are forked so there's more choice in the end. MATE for example was made for those who didn't like GNOME 3, I really like this project. But regarding distributions... so many of them work against new linux users because this fact actually confuse people in the first place - 'which distro to use?' is by far the most asked question by newbies, and to answer this question is a very complicated matter.

Re: something that you feel linux is missing

Most systems I owned so far did not even have a firewire port and I have never had a cable like "USB-A male (2x)", although I think this might be possible to implement using UEFI and a minimal Linux.

On the other hand: Would I really want a feature, that allows everybody with a laptop to access the data on my system, even if no user is logged in and without the need to open the case, carry extra equipment and take some time (and leave traces)?

Has anybody tried to connect two computers via the SATA port yet? It would be faster than network or USB and all we need might be a driver. Just mount the other computer and push data over the cable, the other end would then move the data to a pre-defined drive and folder.

Re: something that you feel linux is missing

It is possible to secure the system so that it will not start in target disk mode. So you'd have to go into Open Firmware (or whatever they use now), give the password and alter the settings to allow it. There are independent reasons to do this in any case such as the fact that anybody who knows how can start your machine in single-user mode which gets you root access without a password. I stopped using an OF password because there was a bug which could prevent you authenticating and I was more scared of creating a brick than I was of having my data stolen, but I am assuming this was only temporary - especially because I think OF was a PPC thing and must have been replaced by now.

Re: something that you feel linux is missing

You now are able to configure those things from userspace. The OSX install disc used to have this functionality, but with the move to no media installs and whatnot, I am not sure where they put those utilities now.

Re: something that you feel linux is missing

to be for real:-better wifi drivers(not the fault of linux though)-better support for webcam(not the fault of linux though)

used to say games but now we have steam so that's resolved. :-)

“There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies. And the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.”-- C.A.R. Hoare